Talking About Organizations Podcast

For our 10th anniversary episode, we selected a modern classic that greatly informs science and research across many disciplines, including organization studies. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book often assigned to rising graduate students as a primer for entering the sciences. A culmination of Kuhn’s earlier works on the philosophy and history of science, Scientific Revolutions challenges the notion that science progresses along a predictable or linear path and instead progresses through significant episodes of disruptive change. Filled with useful and accessible historical examples, Kuhn is a great resource for understanding how science and scientific communities function.

Coming soon! For our 10th anniversary episode, we selected a modern classic that greatly informs science and research across many disciplines, including organization studies. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book often assigned to rising graduate students as a primer for entering the sciences.

10 years ago today, on October 13th, 2015, four rising scholars – Dmitrijs, Pedro, Miranda, and Ralph – launched the Talking About Organization Podcast with an episode on Frederic Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management. In this special, current-day cast members reflect on what we have done and what we would like to continue doing in the program. To learn more about this program and its mission, please go to our website at www.talkingaboutorganizations.com

In Part 2 of the episode on the Private SNAFU video series, we recount the various trials and tribulations of developing training modules for organizational use. What kinds of media and approaches would be most effective and most efficient, given the increasing breadth and complexity of workplace rules and policies that need to be socialized among the workforce?

Private SNAFU was a series of black-and-white animated shorts of three to five minutes in length recounting various misadventures of the title character as he goes to war. The purpose of the training videos was to socialize and reinforce the importance of adherence existing US Army policies and procedures and helping to introduce soldiers to potential hazards and challenges that they would face in combat. Produced by Warner Bros. using a Looney Tunes animation style, the shorts used comedy to get the points across that failing to adhere to the rules would compromise the mission and likely get oneself killed or seriously injured. We examine these videos through an organizational socialization lens – how to impart the needed rules and regulations to a large number of homesick and nervous soldiers and make the messages stick?

For this year’s movie episode, we elected to take on a video series used during World War II to help socialize US Army rules and procedures among forces either deployed or getting ready to deploy. Private SNAFU was a series of black-and-white animated shorts of three to five minutesin length recounting various misadventures of the title character as he goes to war. We will examine these videos from an organizational studies perspective.

In Part 2, we continue exploring the case study of NASA in the 1960s. Having discussed the strategies used by President Kennedy to inspire NASA’s members to the ultimate goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, it was then up to the members to connect their work activities (many of which had nothing directly to do with spaceflight) to that ultimate goal. To what extent could this be replicated, we asked ourselves? Or was the moon shot so unique that replication is not really possible? Turn in and see what we have to say on the matter.

In this month’s episode, we examine a historical case study about how meaningfulness of work can be shaped by leaders’ actions. One frequently cited example of the solidarity felt among members of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the decade-long runup to the Apollo XI moon landing is the often-repeated—but apocryphal—story of a NASA janitor who, when asked by President John F. Kennedy what he was doing, replied, “I’m not just mopping the floors, I’m putting a man on the moon!” This is the title of an article by Andrew Carton, who examined thousands of documents to uncover how President Kennedy and NASA leaders instilled meaningfulness and purpose among workers, allowing them to connect their individual work activities to the overall organizational purpose. The janitor story may be a myth, but the general sentiments were real and this paper based on archival data shows how leaders can be architects of meaningfulness.

Coming soon! We will discuss Drew Carton’s 2018 article “’I’m not mopping the floors, I’m putting a man on the moon’: How NASA leaders enhanced the meaningfulness of work by changing the meaning of work” from Administrative Science Quarterly that delves into the reality behind the myth of the highly motivated NASA janitor during the 1960s.

In Part 2 of the episode on Mark Granovetter's 1985 paper, "Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness," we consider the meaning of embeddedness in contemporary practical situations and the significant body of research that followed forty years later. His framework provides a more nuanced and realistic explanation of economic life, accounting for both the guiding influence of social contexts and the capacity of individuals to act independently when necessary.